Contentinople - Erin Barker - News Bits: CBS Revamps TV.com

Written by Erin Barker

Monday, January 12. 2009 at 11:25 AM EST 2 comments

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UPDATED -- CBS Corp. (NYSE: CBS) has relaunched TV.com, which it attained through its acquisition of CNET, to compete with sites like Hulu LLC .

Previously the site was a community and information site for TV lovers, but today CBS is expected to announce content deals with PBS, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Inc. , Sony Corp. (NYSE: SNE), Endemol USA, and Showtime Networks Inc.

If those deals are any indication, TV.com doesn't have to worry about measuring up to Hulu in terms of content -- in fact, it already has a deal in place to show Hulu content. However, CBS claims TV.com's major advantage is that it already has a social community in place, unlike other sites (like Hulu, Fancast, and Joost ) that have attempted to cultivate communities with little success.

According to The Wall Street Journal, TV.com receives six "social contributions" (like comments or show rankings) per second, and had 4.8 million unique visitors in November. [Ed. note: Oddly, The New York Times reports that TV.com had 16 million unique visitors in November... But one of them must be right.]

UPDATE: Apparently, neither are right, according to a commenter who works for TV.com. In actuality, the site had had 14 million visitors last month.

In other news:

It may not be the end of the Zune just yet, despite a recent report from The Financial Times, which claimed that Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer had "all but thrown in the towel" on the digital music device. The Zune Insider blog attempted to clarify the situation with this vague statement: "We've been saying for some time that our strategy for Zune is to provide a great entertainment experience across multiple screens and devices. Software and services have always been at the core of this strategy - this is nothing new. Today, this means a great Zune experience on the PC and portable Zune devices, and as we have said before we think it makes sense to extend that experience to other devices in the future."

Daniel Lyons (a.k.a. Fake Steve Jobs -- known as such for running a blog called "The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs") dared to attack the Apple overlord in this week's issue of Newsweek, in a column titled "The Search for the Next Steve Jobs." Oddly, despite the title, the column contains very little information about new candidates to lead Apple and very much information about how Jobs is a great big jerk. "See, in the world of Steve, it's all about Steve," Lyons writes. "When he does go, he will be remembered as a tremendous genius -- but also as a petulant narcissist with a grandiose sense of his importance and a sadly limited view of the world around him." But how do you really feel, Dan?

Tags: Business, CBS, Hulu, Joost, Microsoft, Site Launch, Technology, Zune

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